


Benedictus

by umbrafix



Series: Things that ought to have been in the series but were tragically left out [5]
Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: Episode Related, Episode Tag, Gen, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-18
Updated: 2017-01-20
Packaged: 2018-09-18 10:36:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9380663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/umbrafix/pseuds/umbrafix
Summary: Missing scenes from episode 4.2, Canticle, focusing on Morse, DeBryn and Thursday





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for Series 4 episode 2!
> 
> Chapter 1: Following on from when Morse goes to visit DeBryn at the Morgue to hear about Barry Finch, and DeBryn mock-strangles him ;)

_“So why would someone want to make it look like murder, if it wasn’t?”_

_“Nothing really adds up, does it?”_

 

Morse contemplated the belongings on the tray. A few coins, a pencil, a notebook. He set the watch down and picked up the book, flipping through its pages. An appointment book, but a remarkably empty one. Probably a gift.

 

“Sorry about that, by the way,” came DeBryn’s voice, and when Morse half-turned the pathologist nodded towards Morse’s neck.

 

The hand which had subconsciously started rubbing it again dropped, and Morse waved the comment off.  “Clearly you believe in practical demonstrations,” he said wryly.

 

“Oh yes; rather necessary when teaching my sort of work.”

 

“You teach?” Morse asked, surprised, and turned the rest of the way round, setting the book back down next to the other belongings.

 

“Hmm? Yes, on occasion. Mainly just training up an assistant; seeing them become almost competent, watching them leave for jobs with better pay. Having a new one foisted on me.”

 

“I didn’t know.”

 

“Well, I also lecture to medical students. Frequently I’m the one who shows them how to cut up their first cadaver.”

 

DeBryn sounded as though he were talking about a spring picnic, and Morse was mildly disconcerted by the pathologist’s job all over again.

 

“Yes, well.” Morse rubbed his neck again, DeBryn following the motion.

 

“That’s one of the few ways someone hasn’t tried to kill you yet, isn’t it?”

 

Morse snorted. “You make it sound like a regular occurrence.”

 

“It’s not _irr_ egular. I certainly see you bloodied or bruised more than your average police officer.”

 

“Perhaps most police officers don’t go to the pathologist for treatment.”

 

DeBryn gave him a smile, a quick sliver of a thing. “I cannot refute you there.”

 

Morse waited for a moment, shrugged, and moved back to the side. “Do you have a bag I could use for all these coins?”

 

“Probably somewhere around here. Give me a moment.”

 

DeBryn left, and Morse regretted asking. There was something in the atmosphere of an unattended morgue which made the hair at the back of his neck stand up. His sister would have said he had an overactive imagination.

 

“Here we are.” Morse started slightly at the door slamming back open. “Will that do?”

 

“Perfect.” He tried a smile, but it felt tight round the edges. “I’ll just be-“

 

“Did you ever hear back?”

 

Morse stopped a few feet from the door. “About what?”

 

“The exam paper? Missing, I think you said, last time I saw you. Did they ever find it?”

 

Heat flushed from his throat up into his cheeks. “No,” he said tersely. “Nor do I think they ever will. It’s too late anyway; it was too late when it didn’t arrive with the others.”

 

“Bit unfair,” DeBryn offered mildly, and oh, that fanned the flames.

 

“Unfair?” Morse snapped. “Unfair that mine was the only paper to go astray, unfair that apparently I should move to another city if I ever want to advance, unfair that-“

 

He broke off. Swung away and rubbed thumb and forefinger over his eyes. “It’s too late now,” he repeated.

 

“I had no idea,” DeBryn said quietly, and Morse gave a sharp jerk of a nod. He heard slow footsteps coming closer; fought the urge to step away.

 

DeBryn stopped a couple of feet away and they stayed like that, Morse with his back to him, for a long moment.

 

“Perhaps it wasn’t a cover up?” the pathologist said. Morse looked over his shoulder, eyebrow raised in query. “I mean, the strangulation even though he was already dying. Perhaps it was a mistake.”

 

“How can you mistakenly strangle someone?” Morse said dismissively, but then his mind _ticked_ , and he frowned. “I have to get back to the station.”

 

“Cheerio, Morse,” DeBryn said to his fading footsteps.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thursday and Morse go out on a boat to find the missing Nick. This is the conversation they had out on the water.

They almost capsized the row boat getting in. Thursday managed alright with Morse holding it - the slow soak of lake water seeping up his trouser cuffs - but then Morse stumbled in after him as he pushed off and the boat rocked wildly. Thursday swore, bright and rough, and Morse sat with all the cautious haste he could manage.

 

“So why haven’t they bloody looked out there again, if it’s his _special_ place,” grumbled Thursday roughly, as Morse grabbed the oars and pushed them further away from the shore. “Maybe he came back, after they checked?”

 

“The other boat’s still missing,” Morse pointed out. “He must be out there somewhere. It’s dark – they could have missed him.”

 

Thursday grunted. “Coincidence, you think? Or has he done a runner?”

 

“Or has someone gone after him, too?” said Morse, his mind on the strange sadness of Nick when he’d spoken to him that afternoon. There was something there…

 

“Need a hand?”

 

Morse found Thursday’s face, obscured by the light of the torch, saw the hand gesturing to the oars. “Oh, that’s alright, sir. I don’t mind rowing.”

 

“Bit harder with two of us,” Thursday said.

 

Morse pulled harder at the oars, feeling the rhythm of his muscles and the brace of his legs. “Been a while since I’ve had any practice.”

 

He could feel Thursday’s eyes on him. “I didn’t know you used to row?” Thursday said, speculative.

 

“No, not like that. But I had friends that did. We used to go out together sometimes, for fun.”

 

The oars splashed as they dipped into the water, and he could barely make out Thursday’s contemplative hum.

 

“Whenever I imagine you at university, it’s you crammed into a library full of books and not seeing sunlight for years.” Thursday’s tone was light, amused, and the familiarity of it echoed how things had been between them a year ago, two.

 

“I got out sometimes,” was all Morse said.

 

Sometimes Susan had come to watch him, when he went rowing out on the river with them.

 

“May miracles never cease.” They carried on in silence for a minute, and Morse estimated they must be half way there. Nick hadn’t half picked an awkward spot for his hideaway. “You still friends with them then, these rowers of yours?”

 

Morse didn’t answer at first, until he heard Thursday draw breath to say something else. “Not really. We don’t cross paths much, and there was…” He paused, lifting the oars to rest them for a moment. “Some of them were more than friends with each other.”

 

He didn’t have to see Thursday’s face to feel his understanding. “I see.”

 

One more stroke, the oars smooth again. “They got found out; one of them had parents who… It didn’t end well.” His throat tightened, and the next sentence didn’t come out.

 

_It had ended with one of them killing himself, but people didn’t talk about that sort of thing, after._

 

“That’s a bad situation,” Thursday said softly.

 

“The group didn’t really stay together, after that. I still think about it, sometimes. If there was something I could have done.”

 

Across from him, Thursday shifted, and his shoe bumped against Morse’s.

 

“That what’s got your goat up about Mrs Pettybon?” he asked mildly.

 

Morse had expected to be reamed out ten times over for being unable to keep a civil tongue when speaking to her – he’d felt Thursday’s cool disapproval with him after every encounter. But Thursday had let it slide, every time, and Morse owed him for that.

 

“She’s the worst sort of person,” Morse said, hearing the temper creep stridently into his words. “Ruining people’s lives, judging them with her ridiculous morals. Bad enough if she stayed home with them, but to inflict herself on the nation…”

 

“You know I agree with you,” Thursday said, “but it’s still the job, Morse. You need to be able to do it, no matter what.”

 

Morse cut off his laugh half-formed. “Would anyone really be sad if she died?” he asked, and couldn’t regret the words after he’d uttered them. “Even her own daughter-“

 

“Let’s leave the daughter out of it, shall we?”

 

Morse subsided, though the injustice of it rose in his chest once again. Just as well Thursday didn’t know she’d visited him at his home – God, he’d felt like an idiot letting her in, but what was he supposed to do? And she kept saying things –for every remark gone astray there was a truth which cut surprisingly deep, for all that she didn’t know him at all.

 

“Anyway,” Thursday continued. “Our job’s to protect people. Not to decide who lives or dies based on how much they piss us off. Got that, Morse?” And there was the iron, the command.

 

Morse didn’t reply, heart still rebelling, and a moment later Thursday jerked in surprise as they shuddered into the bank of the small island.

 

“We’re here.”

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Episode Coda: Thursday returning to the hospital the day after we see Morse wake up

When Thursday came back the following day, Morse was asleep again. If he hadn’t just checked with the sister he might have thought the recovery of the previous day a dream – Morse was sprawled in the same position on his stomach, lost to the world.

 

Recovering well, she’d said. Tired, but showing no excessive signs of confusion or disorientation; apparently the doctor had been cautiously optimistic.

 

_Cautiously optimistic_. The words sat like lead in Thursday’s stomach now, because he hadn’t talked enough to the lad the day before to ascertain more than that he was still more or less in his right mind.

 

“You’ve had everyone right worried,” he told Morse’s sleeping form. “Even Mr Bright.”

 

Thursday pulled the visitor’s chair back to his usual place at the side of the lad’s bed. It was just as uncomfortable as it had been the day before – somehow he managed to forget every time. He winced, and shifted himself from side to side.

 

“Not that you’d care about Mr Bright’s opinion of course,” he continued. He’d gotten quite used to talking to an unconscious Morse. “Or anyone else’s. Never going to be a diplomat, are you?”

 

He rummaged in his pockets for a moment, and then made a noise of satisfaction at finding a pencil.

 

“Morse?”

 

When no answer was forthcoming, he picked up the paper lying on the bedside table – someone else had obviously been visiting – and opened it to the right page. “Clearly you’ve not been at this yet, then.”

 

He didn’t do anything else for a minute, just watched Morse’s back rise and fall, rise and fall.

 

“Well then.” He cleared his throat. “Alarming disclosure of beauty. Nine letters.” 

 

A minute passed. A nurse came in to change the bedpan of the next chap over, and Thursday wondered that Morse managed to sleep at all in here.

 

“No?” he said. “Alright. Jammed cylinder, five letters, four letters.” He thought that one over for a moment. “Something to do with an engine?”

 

Morse shifted, ever so slightly. Thursday repeated, as if to himself, “Jammed cylinder.”

 

“It’s bombshell,” Morse rasped. Thursday raised an eyebrow, and waited until Morse twisted his way around to blink drowsily in his direction.

 

“How’s that then?”

 

“The first one.” Morse yawned. “The alarming beauty. Bombshell.”

 

Thursday looked down at the paper, mouthed the clue again.

 

“The bomb’s alarming, and the whole word-“

 

“Alright, alright, I get it,” Thursday said testily, because he wasn’t _stupid_. “What about this other one then? If bombshell’s right, then the forth letter of the first word’s an s.”

 

“It’s obvious, isn’t it,” Morse said in an offhand tone.

 

“What’s the answer then?” Thursday asked neutrally.

 

“Well it’s a-“ Morse caught up, and Thursday could see the moment when he realised that no, it hadn’t been obvious for Thursday, could see the surprise. “Oh, well, think about it. The answer’s always in the clue. Here it wants you to take the words literally. So jam, and some kind of tube. It’ll be Swiss roll,” he added after a moment.

 

Thursday sighed, and laid the paper off to one side. “I could never get the hang of those things. Haven’t got the patience.”

 

Morse was staring at the ceiling, rubbing idly at his forehead with the side of his hand. “It’s what we do though,” he said abruptly. “Solve puzzles. Look at things differently.”

 

“It’s certainly what you do,” Thursday said dryly. “Especially the differently part.”

 

Morse smiled an absent smile, glanced at him and then away again. There was still something off about him, like he was half away in a dreamland. Still, he’d only just woken up.

 

“Morse?” Thursday asked after a minute, and got no response, even though the lad’s eyes were open and staring. “Morse?”

 

Blue eyes tracked back to him. “Hmm?”

 

Which left him having to think of something to say, not wanting to admit he’d just been checking that Morse was still with him. “What sandwich is it today, then?” he settled for.

 

Brows arched then furrowed in consideration. “Sandwiches, on a Saturday?” Morse said, lips curling in a slight smile at the memory of a half forgotten conversation.

 

“Nonetheless,” Thursday said dryly. “Missus sent me off with some. It'll be a surprise for both of us then.”

 

He fished them out of his jacket pocket, and ate them as Morse’s eyes traced webs on the ceiling.

 

\--------------------------------

 

The End.


End file.
